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The Sound of Silence

Two weeks ago I installed a new $80 hard disk drive in my computer, to replace a much more expensive SCSI disk that makes too damn much noise. Last weekend I made the switch, and turned off the SCSI disk, possibly forever. The difference in noise is remarkable, to the point of being eerie.

Two weeks ago I installed a new hard disk in my Mac G4, a 75 gig IDE disk, to complement the 70 gig SCSI hard disk that came with the computer when I bought it. The SCSI disk is an ultra-high performance hard drive, running at a much higher rotation speed and connected to a dedicated high-performance interface card. The disk and card added $1,100 to the cost of the system, and for speed it (theoretically) blows the doors off the IDE drive.

It’s also incredibly noisy.

It’s a high-pitched whine, and when the disk is on, it pervades the office, penetrates the brain, and drives me nuts. Then when the disk is active, when I’m downloading or running scanning activities, it audibly chirrs and chatters away. It’s by far the noisiest device in the office. Ah, the price of speed.

So I bought the relatively slow IDE disk, for $80, because it is one of the disks with fluid dynamic bearings, and runs nearly silent. My intent was to transfer my entire installation from the SCSI disk to the IDE drive, and disconnect the SCSI disk, hoping to reduce the overall noise level to something bearable.

Last weekend I did exactly that. When I shut down the machine to disconnect the power cable from the SCSI disk, I took a moment to savor the noise my computer makes when it powers down to quiescence (my system normally runs full-time, 24/7; I never turn it off except for maintenance). The SCSI disk makes this slowly trailing off whine, like a jet turbine shutting down. When it finished, the office was eerily quiet.

When I booted back up, the G4 was not entirely silent. The power supply and chassis fans all make some noise, which was hard to notice before, over the whine of the SCSI disk.

The weirdest thing for me was that disk activity is unnoticeable. Booting and during other disk-intensive activities, I could previously hear the disk quite distinctly, and it gave me feedback that the task was making progress. The new disk is completely inaudible over the (fairly quiet) fan noise, and gives me zero clues that anything is happening at all. It’s great, but I find it interesting that I actually depended on the unpleasant disk noise to know that things were running normally.

Guess I’ll have to get used to it. :-)

Stop Stealing Feed

Not too long ago a big media executive whined about how people who used TiVo were stealing. I love my TiVo, and I skip stupid commercials, so I guess that makes me a thief. There’s a way to stop all this larceny: make better commercials.

Not too long ago a big media executive whined about how people who used TiVo were stealing. I love my TiVo, and I skip stupid commercials, so I guess that makes me a thief.

There is an antidote to that, for the networks and their advertisers. Stop showing stupid commercials. Show good ones instead. A new Honda ad is a great example. This commercial is so good, the opposite of skipping it is happening. I’m recommending it here, and in e-mails to friends. And I’m not the only one.

So stop your stinkin’ whining, Mr. Kellner, and start turning out stuff people want to watch.

Everything’s Better With Bacon

The other night Rochelle and I watched Monster’s Inc., in every way a better movie than the Oscar winner, Shrek. Before watching the movie, we made popcorn. With three different fats on top.

The other night Rochelle and I watched Monsters, Inc., in every way a better movie than the Oscar winner, Shrek. Before watching the movie, we made popcorn. I bought these popcorn packets, with coconut oil, seasoning salt, and popcorn, that are phenomenal.

But we weren’t satisfied with the basics. We skipped some of the coconut oil and substituted bacon fat. And then we shaved Parmesan cheese on top of it. Hey, that’s only three different fats. Rochelle talked me out of pouring melted butter on top of it all.

The Last Burger

I just ate the last burger. The last burger sold by Rosamunde Sausage Grill. I took it next door to Toronado, ordered a Big Daddy IPA, and ate it. It was the last one. Because today is the last Burger-Day.

I just ate the last burger. The last hamburger sold by Rosamunde Sausage Grill.

Rosamunde’s is a sausage place (hence the name), but on Tuesdays — and only on Tuesdays — they served SF’s best hamburger. A large 1/2 pound patty of incredibly good beef, grilled perfectly, with lettuce, tomato, grilled onions, melted cheddar, and your selection of Rosamunde’s fabulous mustards. For $4. If you never had one, you missed out. Because I had the last one.

I ordered it about 2:30pm. I had gone by earlier, and it was too crowded for me to wait in line, order, and wait for a burger. I mean, it’s just a burger, right? Except it’s not. But they’ll just make more, right? Except they won’t.

So at 2:30pm, I decided the crowd wouldn’t go away any time soon, and I should get one. (Actually, I planned to get two, one for Rochelle.) There was only one person ahead of me in line, although Rosamunde’s itself was packed with people eating their burgers.

We both waited patiently, as the four men behind the counter worked their way through the 10 or so burgers that had come up and needed to be distributed. One guy on the grill, two setting up buns and fixin’s and doing assembly, and one guy running the register and The List.

The List turned out to be important. It’s the only way the chaos of a Burger-Day could be managed. At any given time during lunch, there are 20-30 entries on The List, with different levels of doneness, different condiments, special requests, and above all, a name for the person who gets to pay for and eat it. There’s a fixed number of burgers on a Burger-Day, 120, and when they’re gone, it’s over. Wait until next week. Except there won’t be a next week.

After the latest burgers got distributed, a quick count of The List showed that there were two burgers left. Two. The woman in front of me, one of the neighborhood’s crack whores, got one. And I got the other. A few minutes later, a gang of seven slackers turned away en mass when they were informed there were no more. Not “OK, I’ll have a sausage instead.” They just turned and left, all seven. Good riddance.

So I left and bought batteries, and took a now-working flashlight out to my car, and pet the cats. And went back for my burger. It was the second-to-last burger off the grill, but the last went to the guy running The List. Mine was the last one sold.

I took it next door to Toronado, ordered a Big Daddy IPA, and ate it.

It was good. It was the last one. Because today is the last Burger-Day.

How to Chase Cats

My buddy at work was laughing, and when I asked what at, he sent me the URL to a funny article, The Horror of Blimps. You’ll probably be disappointed after the build-up, but when she read it Rochelle laughed so hard she cried.

I first saw these things on a UK gadget web site, and I have to confess, my immediate thought was that it would be fun to chase the cats with one.

C’est Fromage

We just ate cheese for dinner. Four really fucking good cheeses, air shipped to us from France. Rochelle read about Fromages.com in the New York Times, and talked Hilda into splitting a shipment with us. Our selection arrived this morning.

It’s a really cool service. You tell them on what day you want the cheeses to arrive, and they will ship it overnight the day prior, for delivery the day you select. So if you’re taking the cheeses to a party, or throwing your own, it’s easy to schedule it so they’ll be at the peak of ripeness when you get them.

We ate a lot of phenomenal cheeses while we were in France last year. Yes, there’s great cheese available right here in the Bay Area, but there’s really nothing like the cheeses we enjoyed overseas. So, while it’s a little expensive, it’s worth doing from time to time.

It also seems like a great way to thank France for their courageous stand against the pressure of the US to launch an attack on Iraq. We’ll be eating French cheese, and drinking as much French champagne as we can in the coming weeks.

That’ll be a hardship.

Make Margaritas, Not War

I’ll spare you the politics, and just say once again that we’re huuuuge fans of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant, on Geary between 23rd and 24th. They have, hands down, game over, the best margaritas in the Bay Area, and probably in the United States. There’s more than 200 premium tequilas available, and a deep and abiding love for the spirit that makes you love it too.

Rochelle and I are spending most of our Sunday afternoons there between now and the end of May, working on our Ph. D. in tequila, timed for completion with Rochelle’s birthday. Come by and drink with us!

Thinking In Java, 3rd Edition

Hey, in the holidaze rush, I missed this: the third edition of Bruce Eckel’s Thinking In Java has just been published. Highly recommended, by any Java geek worth their paycheck.

Gerard Boyer

Photos of our meal from Gerard Boyer are up in the photos section. This was the best meal of our trip to France, and the most expensive. We both had the fixed price lunch of the day, with the only difference being our desserts.

I felt badly about going to this 3 Michelin star restaurant in slacks and shirt, instead of my suit, but we’d just gotten it back from the fiasco with Virgin, and I hadn’t had time to unpack it.

They still treated us wonderfully, and the food was spectacular. I would imagine that at different times of the year, or during different economic times, the dining room is packed, but we were able to dine peacefully in a half-empty room.

Recommended!

Ads I Actually Like

In the course of shopping for various things this holiday season, I had occasion to use Google quite a bit, searching for information and vendors. One of the things I noticed was that for some queries the ads served with my results were actually more valuable than the search results themselves.

In the course of shopping for the parts for my replacement server, I had occasion to use Google quite a bit, searching for information and vendors. One of the things I noticed was that I occasionally found more useful pointers in the ads than in the results, I was actually clicking on the ads to learn more.

And then I was shopping for, of all things, popcorn. Not just any popcorn, mind you, but the popcorn, oil, and seasoning packs to go with our Whirley Pop popcorn popper. The combination produces popcorn that’s infinitely better than microwave popcorn, and virtually identical to movie theater popcorn (of which I usually eat two bags when I see a movie).

I had started at Amazon.com, which carries the popper itself, but not additional popcorn packs. So I searched Google for “whirley pop popcorn” and got a slew of results, none of which was actually useful in finding a place where I could buy the packs.

Ah, but the ads! Of course, the ads are from people who want to sell me something — something I want to buy! And indeed, there were about a dozen ads from different popcorn supply companies. I clicked through a few of them, looking for the right package, and placed an order at the third store I visited.

It won’t be every day that the ads are worth more to me than the results, but I sure am glad that someone has figured out how to make advertising valuable to those viewing it, instead of a pain in the ass to be avoided any way I can think of. Kudos to Google!

Phoenix Rising, and Changing Its Name

If you use Windows, chances are you’re using Internet Explorer to access the Internet. Which probably means you’re being bombarded with really annoying pop-up ads, or worse, while you surf the web. I don’t have that problem, because I’m using Phoenix.

I don’t have that problem, because I’m using Phoenix, a browser-only application based on Mozilla. Phoenix is smaller, faster, and has a nicer user interface than Mozilla — which means that it blows IE totally away.

That doesn’t even count the two innovations in Phoenix (and Mozilla) which IE doesn’t have at all: the aforementioned pop-up blocking, and tabbed browsing, which lets you group related web pages into a single browser window for easily switching back and forth.

Either is worth switching for, as I can testify. I’m much more productive using Phoenix than IE, primarily due to the tabbed browsing, and I’m less annoyed by the web, primarily due to pop-up blocking.

Phoenix is on version “0.5”, which might make you think it’s unfinished. It isn’t finished, but even today, it’s fast and nearly defect-free in my daily use. It’s now good enough that someone like Rochelle can use it, instead of being mostly for geeks like me.

About the name change (FAQ #14)

Open the Gold Box!

I recently discovered the subtle danger that is Amazon.com’s Gold Box. It’s a series of special offers, which proved to be irresistible this afternoon. You too should become a Gold Box junkie!

So, I recently discovered the subtle danger that is Amazon.com‘s Gold Box. If you’ve never heard of or tried it, it’s a gold treasure chest icon in the top right of Amazon.com’s web pages — all of them.

The concept is simple. You click on the Gold Box to get access to 10 special offers. You access the offers serially, that is, one at a time. It’s a special deal on some “random” item, usually not a book, that ranges from a few dollars savings to $50 or more. To see the second offer, you have to “pass forever” on the first. To see the third, you have to give up the second. And so on, a one-way trip through an online coupon book. And you get a new Gold Box every 24 hours.

What’s insideous is that (I believe) they’ve carefully thought about what to show you if you decide to buy. When I decided to save a couple bucks on the Misto Martini Vermouth Sprayer, I was presented with a slew of additional martini-related items. And, uh, I bought something from the list (Riedel martini glasses, if you must know).

And then I saw more “related” items, lots of high-end stemware for other sophisticated adult beverages. And, um, I bought a set of those, too. (Riedel wine glasses…and yes, we’ve proven they do make a difference.)

So, $200+ later, I’ve saved about $20 on Amazon.com’s usual prices — but I only meant to buy a $10 vermouth sprayer!